Three experiments are reported which show that in certain contexts subjects reject instances of the valid modus ponens and modus tollens inference form in conditional arguments. For example, when a conditional premise, such as: If she meets her friend then she will go to a play, is accompanied by a conditional containing an additional requirement: If she has enough money then she will go to a play, subjects reject the inference from the categorical premise: She meets her friend, to the (...) conclusion: She will go to a play. Other contexts suppress the conditional fallacies. The first experiment demonstrates the effects of context on conditional reasoning. The second experiment shows that the inference suppression disappears when the categorical premise refers to both of the antecedents, such as: She meets her friend and she has enough money. In this case, subjects make both the valid inferences and the fallacies, regardless of the contextual information. The third experiment establishes that when subjects are given general information about the duration of a situation in which a conditional inducement was uttered, such as: If you shout then I will shoot you, they reject both the valid inferences and the fallacies. The results suggest that the interpretation of premises plays an even more central role in reasoning than has previously been admitted. Trois expériences montrent que dans certains contextes les sujets rejettent des instances valides de modus ponens et de modus tollens dans des énoncés conditionnels. Par exemple, quand une prémisse conditionnelle comme: Si elle rencontre son ami, alors elle ira jouer, est accompagnée par une phrase contenant une condition supplémentaire: Si elle a assez d'argent, alors elle ira jouer, les sujets rejettent l'inférence liant la prémisse catégorielle: Elle rencontre son ami, à la conclusion: Elle ira jouer. D'autres contextes éliminent également les inférences conditionnelles fallacieuses. La premiére expérience démontre l'effet du contexte sur la raisonnement conditionnel. La deuxiéme expérience montre que la suppression de l'inférence disparait quand la prémisse catégorielle fait référence aux deux antécédants, comme: Elle rencontre son ami et elle a assez d'argent. Dans ce cas, les sujets font aussi bien les inférences valides et fallacieuses, quelle que soit l'information contextuelle. La troisiéme expérience établit que quand l'on donne aux sujets des informations générales à propos de la durée d'une situation dans laquelle une conditionnelle a été prononcée, comme Si tu cries, alors je te tire dessus, ils rejettent autant les inférences valides que les inférences fallacieuses. Ces résultats suggèrent que l'interprétation des prémisses joue un rŏle encore plus central dans le raisonnement que l'on admettait auparavant. (shrink)

Predicate nominals (e.g., “is a female”) seem to label or categorize their subjects, while their adjectival correlates (e.g., “is female”) merely attribute a property. Predicate nominals also elicit essentializing inferential judgments about inductive potential and stable explanatory membership. Data from psychology and semantics support that this distinction is robust and productive. I argue that while the difference between predicate nominals and predicate adjectives is elided by standard semantic theories, it ought not be. I then develop and defend a psychologically motivated (...) semantic account on which predicate nominals attribute kind membership and trigger a presupposition that underpins our essentialist judgments. (shrink)

Amie Thomasson has articulated a novel conception of ontological debates, defending an easy approach to ontological questions as part of the articulation of a deflationary metaphysical view (Thomasson, 2015). After raising some concerns to the approach, we sketch a neutralist alternative to her ontological framework, offering an even easier way of conducting ontological debates.

People reject ‘paradoxical’ inferences, such as: Luisa didn't play music; therefore, if Luisa played soccer, then she didn't play music. For some theorists, they are invalid for everyday conditionals, but valid in logic. The theory of mental models implies that they are valid, but unacceptable because the conclusion refers to a possibility inconsistent with the premise. Hence, individuals should accept them if the conclusions refer only to possibilities consistent with the premises: Luisa didn't play soccer; therefore, if Luisa played (...) a game then she didn't play soccer. Two experiments corroborated this prediction for three sorts of ‘paradox’, including a disjunctive paradox. (shrink)

I argue racial injustice undermines the reliability of news source reports in the information domain of racial injustice. I argue that this in turn undermines subjects’ doxastic justification in inferences they base on these news sources in the racial injustice information domain. I explain that racial injustice does this undermining through the effect of racial prejudice on news organizations’ members and the effect of society's racially unjust structure on non-dominant racial group-controlled news sources.

Previous research suggests that children can infer causal relations from patterns of events. However, what appear to be cases of causal inference may simply reduce to children recognizing relevant associations among events, and responding based on those associations. To examine this claim, in Experiments 1 and 2, children were introduced to a “blicket detector”, a machine that lit up and played music when certain objects were placed upon it. Children observed patterns of contingency between objects and the machine’s activation that (...) required them to use indirect evidence to make causal inferences. Critically, associative models either made no predictions, or made incorrect predictions about these inferences. In general, children were able to make these inferences, but some developmental differences between 3- and 4- year-olds were found. We suggest that children’s causal inferences are not based on recognizing associations, but rather that children develop a mechanism for Bayesian structure learning. Experiment 3 explicitly tests a prediction of this account. Children were asked to make an inference about ambiguous data based on the base-rate of certain events occurring. Fouryear-olds, but not 3-year-olds were able to make this inference. (shrink)

Building on early work by Girard ( 1987 ) and using closely related techniques from the proof theory of many-valued logics, we propose a sequent calculus capturing a hierarchy of notions of satisfaction based on the Strong Kleene matrices introduced by Barrio et al. (Journal of Philosophical Logic 49:93–120, 2020 ) and others. The calculus allows one to establish and generalize in a very natural manner several recent results, such as the coincidence of some of these notions with their classical (...) counterparts, and the possibility of expressing some notions of satisfaction for higher-level inferences using notions of satisfaction for inferences of lower level. We also show that at each level all notions of satisfaction considered are pairwise distinct and we address some remarks on the possible significance of this (huge) number of notions of consequence. (shrink)

Heuristics are efficient cognitive processes that ignore information. In contrast to the widely held view that less processing reduces accuracy, the study of heuristics shows that less information, computation, and time can in fact improve accuracy. We review the major progress made so far: the discovery of less-is-more effects; the study of the ecological rationality of heuristics, which examines in which environments a given strategy succeeds or fails, and why; an advancement from vague labels to computational models of heuristics; the (...) development of a systematic theory of heuristics that identifies their building blocks and the evolved capacities they exploit, and views the cognitive system as relying on an “adaptive toolbox;” and the development of an empirical methodology that accounts for individual differences, conducts competitive tests, and has provided evidence for people’s adaptive use of heuristics. Homo heuristicus has a biased mind and ignores part of the available information, yet a biased mind can handle uncertainty more efficiently and robustly than an unbiased mind relying on more resource-intensive and general-purpose processing strategies. (shrink)

This invited article is a response to the paper “Quantum Misuse in Psychic Literature,” by Jack A. Mroczkowski and Alexis P. Malozemoff, published in this issue of the Journal of Near-Death Studies. Whereas I sympathize with Mroczkowski’s and Malozemoff’s cause and goals, and I recognize the problem they attempted to tackle, I argue that their criticisms often overshot the mark and end up adding to the confusion. I address nine specific technical points that Mroczkowski and Malozemoff accused popular writers in (...) the fields of health care and parapsychology of misunderstanding and misrepresenting. I argue that, by and large—and contrary to Mroczkowski’s and Malozemoff’s claims—the statements made by these writers are often reasonable and generally consistent with the current state of play in foundations of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

This book is a study in the logic of questions (sometimes called erotetic logic). The central topics in erotetic logic have been the structure of questions and the question-answer relationship. This book doesn't neglect these problems, but much of it is focussed on other issues. The main subject is the logical analysis of certain relations between questions and the contexts of their appearance. And our aim is to elaborate the conceptual apparatus of the inferential approach to the logic of questions. (...) Questions are asked for many reasons and for different purposes. Yet, before a question is asked or posed, a questioner must arrive at it. In many cases arriving at a question resembles coming to a conclusion: there are some premises involved and some inferential thought processes take place. If we agree that a conclusion need not be "conclusive", we may say that sometimes questions can play the role of conclusions. But questions can also perform the role of premises: we often pass from some "initial" question to another question. In other words, there are inferential thought processes - we shall call them erotetic inferences - in which questions play the roles of conclusions or conclusions and premises. The inferential approach to the logic of questions focusses its attention on the analysis of erotetic inferences. This book consists of eight chapters. (shrink)

Utterances can convey more information than they explicitly encode, and speakers exploit communicative conventions in order to say more with less. However, the burden this places on perceivers is not well understood. This chapter examines the effect of speaker-specific information on pragmatic inferences using data from an experiment which investigated the time course of the use of pragmatic information in language comprehension. Previous evidence suggests that comprehenders who encounter a referential form, including a modifier that commonly indicates contrastiveness, assume (...) that the referential form is being used contrastively. Thus, they consequently look to the relevant object in the scene very early when processing the referential expression. In this case, people appear to be implicitly following H. P. Grice’s maxim of quantity. This chapter demonstrates that comprehenders stop using contrastive information early in resolving reference when speakers consistently do not use contrastive elements appropriately, consistent with a pragmatic explanation of referential contrast effects. (shrink)

The notion that emotional expressions regulate social life by providing information is gaining popularity. Prior research on the effects of emotional expressions on observers’ inferential processes has focused mostly on inferences regarding the personality traits of the expresser, such as dominance and affiliation. We extend this line of research by exploring the possibility that emotional expressions shape observers’ construal of social situations. Across three vignette studies, an interaction partner's expressions of anger, compared to expressions of happiness or disappointment, led (...) observers to construe hypothetical situations as less cooperative, both in dyads and groups. These effects occurred even when factual information regarding the cooperativeness or competitiveness of the situation was provided, attesting to the power of emotional expressions in shaping the construal of social situations. Results are discussed in relation to appraisal theory, reverse appraisals, emotions as social information theory, and the emergence of cooperation in groups and cultures. (shrink)

In Ontology Made Easy (2015), I defend the idea that there are ‘easy’ inferences that begin from uncontroversial premises and end with answers to disputed ontological questions. But what do easy inferences really get us? Bueno and Cumpa (this journal, 2020) argue that easy inferences don’t tell us about the natures of properties—they don’t tell us what properties are. Moreover, they argue, by accepting an ontologically neutral quantifier we can also resist the conclusion that properties or numbers (...) exist. Here I address these two issues in turn—in ways that help clarify both the scope and results of easy ontology.First, it is important to see that easy inferences were never intended to address modal questions. Modal questions are addressed by a different part of the total deflationary view—modal normativism. So understood, metaphysical modal questions nonetheless do not provide a remaining area for serious metaphysical inquiry. Second, I argue that we have reason to resist adopting an ontologically neutral quantifier, if we aim to answer ontological questions (without begging the question). Addressing these issues helps to clarify both what does (and does not) follow from easy inferences, and how they form part of a larger deflationary metametaphysical view. (shrink)

The book is an epistemological monograph written from a multidisciplinary perspective. It provides a complex and realistic picture of cognition and rationality, as endowments aimed at making sense and reacting smartly to one's environment, be it epistemic, social or simply ecological. The first part of the book analyzes scientific modeling as products of the biological necessity to cope with the environment and be able to draw as many inferences as possible about it. Moreover, it develops an epistemological framework which (...) will be exploited in both the second part of the book, focusing on social cognition and cognitive niche construction, and the third part, dealing with the apparent irrationality of magical and religious belief. The book also discusses how both social networking and online religion influence cognition, rationality and irrational belief. (shrink)

We examine two competing effects of beliefs on conditional inferences. The suppression effect occurs for conditionals, for example, “if she watered the plants they bloomed,” when beliefs about additional background conditions, for example, “if the sun shone they bloomed” decrease the frequency of inferences such as modus tollens (from “the plants did not bloom” to “therefore she did not water them”). In contrast, the counterfactual elevation effect occurs for counterfactual conditionals, for example, “if she had watered the plants (...) they would have bloomed,” when beliefs about the known or presupposed facts, “she did not water the plants and they did not bloom” increase the frequency of inferences such as modus tollens. We report six experiments that show that beliefs about additional conditions take precedence over beliefs about presupposed facts for counterfactuals. The modus tollens inference is suppressed for counterfactuals that contain additional conditions (Experiments 1a and 1b). The denial of the antecedent inference (from “she did not water the plants” to “therefore they did not bloom”) is suppressed for counterfactuals that contain alternatives (Experiments 2a and 2b). We report a new “switched‐suppression” effect for conditionals with negated components, for example, “if she had not watered the plants they would not have bloomed”: modus tollens is suppressed by alternatives and denial of the antecedent by additional conditions, rather than vice versa (Experiments 3a and 3b). We discuss the implications of the results for alternative theories of conditional reasoning. (shrink)

In certain contexts reasoners reject instances of the valid Modus Ponens and Modus Tollens inference form in conditional arguments. Byrne (1989) observed this suppression effect when a conditional premise is accompanied by a conditional containing an additional requirement. In an earlier study, Rumain, Connell, and Braine (1983) observed suppression of the invalid inferences "the denial of the antecedent" and "the affirmation of the consequent" when a conditional premise is accompanied by a conditional containing an alternative requirement. Here we present (...) three experiments showing that the results of Byrne (1989) and Rumain et al. (1983) are influenced by the answer procedure. When reasoners have to evaluate answer alternatives that only deal with the inferences that can be made with respect to the first conditional, then suppression is observed (Experiment 1). However, when reasoners are also given answer alternatives about the second conditional (Experiment 2) no suppression is observed. Moreover, contrary to the hypothesis of Byrne (1989), at least some of the reasoners do not combine the information of the two conditionals and do not give a conclusion based on the combined premise. Instead, we hypothesise that some of the reasoners have reasoned in two stages. In the first stage, they form a putative conclusion on the basis of the first conditional and the categorical premise, and in the second stage, they amend the putative conclusion in the light of the information in the second premise. This hypothesis was confirmed in Experiment 3. Finally, the results are discussed with respect to the mental model theory and reasoning research in general. (shrink)

This paper provides new tools for philosophical argument analysis and fresh empirical foundations for ‘critical’ ordinary language philosophy. Language comprehension routinely involves stereotypical inferences with contextual defeaters. J.L. Austin’s Sense and Sensibilia first mooted the idea that contextually inappropriate stereotypical inferences from verbal case-descriptions drive some philosophical paradoxes; these engender philosophical problems that can be resolved by exposing the underlying fallacies. We build on psycholinguistic research on salience effects to explain when and why even perfectly competent speakers cannot (...) help making stereotypical inferences which are contextually inappropriate. We analyse a classical paradox about perception, suggest it relies on contextually inappropriate stereotypical inferences from appearance-verbs, and show that the conditions we identified as leading to contextually inappropriate stereotypical inferences are met in formulations of the paradox. Three experiments use a forced-choice plausibility-ranking task to document the predicted inappropriate inferences, in English, German, and Japanese. The cross-linguistic study allows us to assess the wider relevance of the proposed analysis. Our findings open up new perspectives for ‘evidential’ experimental philosophy. (shrink)

People reject ‘paradoxical’ inferences, such as: Luisa didn't play music; therefore, if Luisa played soccer, then she didn't play music. For some theorists, they are invalid for everyday conditionals, but valid in logic. The theory of mental models implies that they are valid, but unacceptable because the conclusion refers to a possibility inconsistent with the premise. Hence, individuals should accept them if the conclusions refer only to possibilities consistent with the premises: Luisa didn't play soccer; therefore, if Luisa played (...) a game then she didn't play soccer. Two experiments corroborated this prediction for three sorts of ‘paradox’, including a disjunctive paradox. (shrink)

Upon hearing a scalar adjective in a definite referring expression such as “the big…,” listeners typically make anticipatory eye movements to an item in a contrast set, such as a big glass in the context of a smaller glass. Recent studies have suggested that this rapid, contrastive interpretation of scalar adjectives is malleable and calibrated to the speaker's pragmatic competence. In a series of eye‐tracking experiments, we explore the nature of the evidence necessary for the modulation of pragmatic inferences (...) in language comprehension, focusing on the complementary roles of top–down information ‐ (knowledge about the particular speaker's pragmatic competence) and bottom‐up cues (distributional information about the use of scalar adjectives in the environment). We find that bottom‐up evidence alone (e.g., the speaker says “the big dog” in a context with one dog), in large quantities, can be sufficient to trigger modulation of the listener's contrastive inferences, with or without top‐down cues to support this adaptation. Further, these findings suggest that listeners track and flexibly combine multiple sources of information in service of efficient pragmatic communication. (shrink)

Truth pluralism is the view that there is more than one truth property. The strong version of it (i.e. strong pluralism) further contends that no truth property is shared by all true propositions. In this paper, I help strong pluralism solve two pressing problems concerning mixed discourse: the problem of mixed inferences (PI) and the problem of mixed compounds (PC). According to PI, strong pluralism is incompatible with the truth- preservation notion of validity; according to PC, strong pluralists cannot (...) find any appropriate truth property for mixed compound propositions, whose atomic constituents are from different domains of discourse (e.g., <sky is blue and chocolate is tasty>). I argue that the strong pluralist is motivated to take the truth predicate in truth-involving universal statements to be deflationary to avoid the two pressing problems. Such a move entails that the truth predicate in the platitude of validity (V) for any argument, it is valid if and only if necessarily its conclusion is true when its premises are all true does not denote any substantive truth property. Instead, it is merely an expressive device to help people generalize instances of (V) to (V). Analogous stories hold for the truth predicate in the platitudes of compound (e.g., conjunction). The upshot is that, the strong pluralist can solve PI and PC by further conceding that mixed compounds are true/false in a deflationary way. (shrink)

Spinoza reasons about impossibilities on a regular basis. But he also says they're unthinkable and that reasoning is a mental process. How can he do this? The paper defends a linguistic account of counterpossible inferences in Spinoza's geometrical method.

Sustainable products offered in today’s marketplace are labelled with product-related green attributes or non-product-related green attributes. The current research investigates consumers’ inferences about a product’s functional quality when its core attributes are green and when its peripheral attributes are green. Four experimental studies and an internal meta-analysis show that there is a sustainability liability effect in strength-dependent categories, and a sustainability asset effect in gentleness-dependent categories. Our research contributes to the current understanding of how consumers make inferences about (...) product quality when contemplating different types of green attributes. The findings have implications for how strength-dependent and gentleness-dependent products should be labelled as green. (shrink)

The main idea that we want to defend in this paper is that the question of what a logic is should be addressed differently when structural properties enter the game. In particular, we want to support the idea according to which it is not enough to identify the set of valid inferences to characterize a logic. In other words, we will argue that two logical theories could identify the same set of validities, but not be the same logic.